VANCOUVER — The invasive fire ant continues to spread in the Lower Mainland, wreaking havoc on Vancouver airport runways and forcing CP Rail to burn the soil on the Arbutus corridor in attempts to eradicate them.

Last summer, several planes hit birds feeding on the fire ants at YVR, forcing a series of short runway closures.

And the pest problem is no longer confined to the common European fire ant.

It has branched out to include a lesser-known species dubbed the “impressive fire ant,” according to Thompson Rivers University entomologist Rob Higgins.

“We’re talking of two different types of fire ants,” said Higgins, noting both fire ants appear to be on the move. “We’ve got them in virtually every municipality.”

We’ve got them in virtually every municipality

Higgins has been conducting surveys of known fire ant infestations and doing random sampling throughout southwestern B.C. to assess the extent of these tiny aggressive insects, which possess a painful sting and swarm very quickly when disturbed.

The investigation initially focused on the European fire ants, which spread naturally over short distances by budding off new colonies in which a queen and a group of worker ants leave a nest to form a new colony.

His research took a turn, though, after a Burnaby entomologist sent Higgins a sample a few years ago of a fire ant discovered at his home. Higgins, who was heading back east to compare his collection, took the ant along and determined it to be the Myrmica specioides, a lesser known species from Europe, that undergoes mating flights every summer.

But it wasn’t until later that fall — after a call from Vancouver International Airport’s wildlife program — that Higgins started researching the impressive fire ant.

Ben Nelms/BloombergTravelers mill about at Vancouver International Airport in Richmond, British Columbia, Canada. The airport is worried about planes colliding with birds feeding on the multitude of ants.

Airport officials were worried about a spate of collisions between small birds, mostly barn sparrows, and planes on the runway during July and August, which forced them to close the runway for five to eight minutes each time to clear away the mess.

“They wanted to know what they’d been eating,” Higgins said. “I looked at their gut contents and they were full of impressive fire ants. They’d been eating a lot of them, especially the winged queens.”

Higgins said it appears the impressive fire ants, who nested in the grasslands around the airport, were attracted to the end of the runway for their mating flights. The swarm of ants then attracted the birds, most of them barn swallows. In one month last summer, he said, there were 50 collisions between birds and planes. One day, there were five runway closures.

David Bradbeer, a runway wildlife specialist at YVR, confirmed the situation. “It is a service inconvenience, but we do close the runway to remove the carcass because we don’t want another bird to be attracted and get hit.”

Bradbeer said the situation only became a problem in the past year. He noted the YVR wildlife management branch has been trying to understand the ecology of the many species around the airport, including the swallows and fire ants, to figure out how to deal with the problem. The investigation has just started, he said.

Fire ants are difficult to control or eradicate, even with pesticides.

Higgins acknowledged the impressive fire ant is “just emerging as an invasive species here” and while he and Bradbeer are looking at running an experiment at YVR to control the ants, he expects it could take a year to get the permits.

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl DyckCP has been fighting a scorched-earth campaign against the fire ants along the Arbutus Corridor rail line that runs from False Creek to the Fraser River in Vancouver.

Meanwhile, the Canadian Pacific Railway, which is tearing up its tracks along the Arbutus corridor on Vancouver’s westside, has been incinerating the soil along the tracks and said it will now also burn the rail ties to ensure the ants aren’t transported to another location.

“I just got confirmation we will incinerate the ties in that whole area,” said CP spokesman Jeremy Berry, noting the move will likely happen next week.

Although Higgins has yet to tally the numbers he has collected through his research, in the past four years, the ants have been introduced to at least 25 locations on Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland through the movement of landscaping materials, soil and potted plants.

He noted the most common areas for fire ants tend to be Vancouver and Chilliwack, but they were recently spotted in West Vancouver, Burnaby and handful of spots in the District of North Vancouver.

FotoliaSure, let's make these things bigger. Then we'll start work on the spiders.

MONTREAL — Canadian scientists have managed to double the size of experimental ants by unlocking the mystery of how an animal’s environment affects how big it grows.

“It’s kind of making big news,” said Ehab Abouheif of McGill University’s evolutionary and developmental biology lab and co-author of a paper published Wednesday in Nature Communications.

Abouheif and his fellow researchers, including McGill geneticist Moshe Syzf, started by looking at ant colonies and asking: Why are some ants of the same species big and other ones small?

They headed out to ant colonies and gathered samples of the social insects. They found that their size seemed to depend on how much a single gene known as EGFR had been “coated” by a chemical process called methylation.

About 70 per cent of size differences between individual ants could be explained by how heavily methylated the gene was — statistically, a highly convincing result.

The team then turned the process around. By manipulating the methylation of that one gene, they were able to grow ants that were twice as big or half the size of normal — from 1.6 to 2.5 millimetres long.

Mélanie Couture and Dominic OuelletteIllustration shows the range of sizes that researchers at McGill University were able to create in ants. The smallest is 1.6 millimetres long while the largest is 2.5 millimetres.

“We used to think that traits like size that fall along a continuum were controlled by many, many, many genes, each having a small role, with the environment having a smoothing-out role,” said Abouheif.

“What we’ve found is something quite fundamental — by putting a coat on a single gene, you can generate that whole continuum in size.

“You get this chemical coating on the gene that modifies the way the gene works. You don’t need any changes in the gene.”

Because methylation is influenced by outside factors such as food, Abouheif and his colleagues have not only defined exactly how environment works to control characteristics such as size, they’ve quantified the strength of that influence.

“What the food is doing is affecting these chemical modifications. What we’re showing is that genes and the environment are equal in their power to generate these continuous traits.”

One of the compounds Abouheif used to alter the size of the ants was folate, a B vitamin which is found naturally in human diets.

What we’ve found is something quite fundamental — by putting a coat on a single gene, you can generate that whole continuum in size

The implications could be far-reaching. Many animals — including humans — have the EGFR gene, which works by triggering the actions of other genes. Methylation is also common across species.

The gene is also connected with the development of cancers.

“We think not only is (this discovery) important for science, but it’s going to have an effect on cancer (research) as well.”

Size isn’t the only characteristic that occurs across a gradual range. Abouheif suspects such features as weight, strength, skin colour and even intelligence might be influenced by a similar chemical process.

Next?

“We’ve got to find out what other genes are involved, connect the dots between the food and the chemical modification. We have to see how this applies in other vertebrate systems …

MONTREAL — Insects generally prompt Canadians to reach for the fly swatter or bug spray, but at an international meeting this month in Montreal, academics and entrepreneurs will argue we should be licking our chops instead.

Inspired by a 2013 report from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization hailing insects as “healthy, nutritious alternatives to mainstream staples such as chicken, pork, beef and even fish,” a growing number of North American enthusiasts are promoting six-legged protein.

“Edible insects really are the quintessential urban agriculture product,” said Aruna Antonella Handa of Toronto, an organizer of Eating Innovation: the Art, Science, Culture and Business of Entomophagy, the conference taking place in Montreal Aug. 26-28. “They do not need a lot of land, they do not need a lot of water and they produce very few emissions. . . . In the same way that we’ve now seen microbreweries spring up in cities, I’d like to see things like that for edible insects.”

The people at Tiny Farms in Oakland, Calif., who will lead a plenary session at the conference, are intent on bringing about the day when snacking on locally sourced crickets is routine. Founded in 2012 by three former tech-sector workers, Tiny Farms is bringing some of the Silicon Valley ethos to what it is confident will be a growing sector. “It’s kind of mind-blowing the potential that exists for edible insects to make an impact on the world,” Daniel Imrie-Situnayake, co-founder and CEO of Tiny Farms, said in an interview.

Han Zhang, Han-Studio, 2013"Crittle" (cricket peanut brittle) as prepared by Toronto-based Cookie Martinez, who will appear at the Eating Innovation in Montreal. SEE RECIPE FOR THIS BELOW.

In addition to selling mealworm farm kits and providing consulting services, his company has taken an open-source approach to the raising of so-called micro-livestock. Do-it-yourself types can download free information on how to build and operate a bug farm, and the company maintains an online forum for sharing farming techniques.

“We’re basically just applying traditional agriculture to a new form of livestock,” Daniel Imrie-Situnayake, co-founder and CEO of Tiny Farms, said in an interview. “We’re using technology to build more efficient farms that can produce more insects with less food and energy and water, but we’re not doing any crazy things.”

The FAO report noted that insects already form part of the diet of two billion people worldwide, with more than 1,900 species finding their way to the dinner table. In Asia, Latin America and Africa, insects can be a delicacy, but North Americans and Europeans tend to turn up their noses. “In most Western countries… people view entomophagy [the eating of insects] with disgust and associate eating insects with primitive behavior,” the report noted.

Marianne Shockley, a University of Georgia entomologist who will take part in another conference session, is described as one of the few North American academics to study bug-eating. In a field where the focus is typically on ridding insects from food crops, she said she gets a few strange looks from colleagues when she describes her interest in making insects more palatable.

She acknowledges that overcoming people’s revulsion is a big hurdle, but she believes it is surmountable. “Is it, ‘I don’t want to see the whole insect?’ Well then, let’s introduce you to a flour,” she said. (Flour from ground-up crickets can be used in foods ranging from tortilla chips to cookies.) “Is it, ‘Oh they’re dirty?’ Then get rid of that stereotype. We clean them, we process them, it’s the same food safety standard as you would have with any other food product.”

Han Zhang, Han-Studio, 2013"Spiced roasted crickets" as prepared by Toronto-based Cookie Martinez, who will appear at the Eating Innovation in Montreal.

She said people are accustomed to eating the underwater equivalent of insects — shrimp, lobster and crayfish — without batting an eye. “They are on the evolutionary and genetic tree, very, very closely related,” she said. “One is marine or freshwater aquatic, and the other is terrestrial. That shrimp you’re eating is an arthropod. Insects are arthropods.”

Ms. Handa, who has been in involved in staging popular insect tastings called Future Food Salons in New York, Toronto and Austin, Tex., points to sushi as an example of how tastes evolve. “Forty years ago if you talked about sushi, people would say, ‘Raw fish? Are you completely out of your mind? There’s no way I’m eating raw fish,’ ” she said. “Now sushi is pretty much ubiquitous.” Chefs such as Toronto’s Cookie Martinez incorporate insects into gourmet dishes. The hope is that, like sushi, once insects gain a cachet among the foodie set, the masses will also develop a taste for them.

Ms. Shockley is confident that once people take their first bite, they’ll be sold. “A lot of us in the entomophagy world truly think that in the next 10 or 20 years, you’re going to be able to find insect products in your grocery stores, and you can already see this in some places around the United States,” she said.

The strain large livestock place on scarce land will leave little choice, she predicted: “As we’re using agricultural land to grow feed for large animals and not necessarily food for us, there’s going to be a tipping point.” The FAO report said insects are a much more efficient source of protein, requiring 1.7 kilograms of feed per kilogram of cricket meat versus 10 kilograms of feed per kilogram of beef.

Kevin Bachhuber is not sure what to call himself, a farmer or an entrepreneur. “I like the phrase cricket wrangler, personally,” he said this week from Youngstown, Ohio, where some 800,000 crickets are being raised for human consumption. Previously, most crickets on the market were raised by companies supplying pet food and bait. Big Cricket Farms describes itself as the “first urban cricket farm in America devoted exclusively to raising human-grade entomophagical products.”

Big Cricket Farms opened in April, and Mr. Bachhuber has been amazed at the interest in his chirping livestock. The crickets are sold frozen or dehydrated. Many buyers grind them into flour while others prepare them whole. “The demand has been quite a bit more intense than I thought it would be at this point,” he said. Vegetarians are open to insect protein, and he has even had emails from vegans looking for bugs. Among his larger customers are Six Foods, makers of Chirps cricket chips, Bitty Foods, which sells flour made from slow-roasted crickets, Chapul, which sells cricket protein bars and Exo, another protein bar maker.

Originally from California, Mr. Bachhuber, 29, chose the U.S. Rust Belt to raise crickets because he saw it as way to promote urban renewal. And with his entire herd contained within a previously abandoned warehouse, cricket farming represents a feasible way for young people to get into agriculture, he said. “This represents something that has a much lower barrier to entry,” he said, calling his investment “low.” Insects reproduce quickly, taking two months from hatching to harvest, and the slaughter is unlikely to attract protests from animal-rights activists. The crickets are killed by lowering their body temperature until they enter a state like hibernation, and then freezing them.

That is not to say killing crickets is always easy. Jakub Dzamba, a doctoral student in architecture at McGill University, is working on a system to incorporate small-scale cricket farms in urban homes, using household compost and eventually algae grown from grey water to feed them. He will be selling the suitcase-sized farms at the Montreal conference for $150. When he first floated the project seven years as a Master’s student at the University of Toronto, “people were openly hostile to the idea,” he said. “They almost kicked me out of the school.” Today, attitudes have changed and urban insect farming is seen as a reasonable pursuit. But first he had to get over an unexpected obstacle.

“You work with them every day, you hear them chirping and you feed them, then when it comes time to kill them, you’re like, ‘Oh, I don’t know whether I can do this,” he said.

“A few times I just let them live until they literally died of old age, I just couldn’t bring myself to kill them, and I don’t think of myself as a softie.”

Han Zhang, Han-Studio, 2013"Thai Crickets spoons" as prepared by Toronto-based Cookie Martinez, who will appear at the Eating Innovation in Montreal.

In Montreal, the Eating Innovation conference will include another Future Food Salon on Aug. 27, where the public can sample insect canapés and sweets for $25. Ms. Handa offered a quick primer on what to expect.

“We refer to crickets as a gateway bug. They’re very easy to eat. Their flavour profile is a little like cashews,” she said. “It can be a little fishy depending on what they’ve been eating.” Mealworms, which have the advantage of being quieter than crickets for noise-sensitive urban farmers, “taste a little like popcorn, not too strong a taste.”

One of her favourite edible insects is burdened with the unfortunate name of waxworm. Not actually a worm but the larva of a moth, when lightly sautéed “it’s a very tasty, tasty thing,” she said. “It’s got a profile similar to scallops and shrimp but a little bit sweeter. It’s absolutely delicious.” Her idea is to rebrand the waxworm as the honeybug. “If I ran a restaurant I would serve that in a champagne coupe with just a little bit of key lime juice and some garnish. . . . ‘I’ll have the honeybug appetizer, thank you.’ ”

Spider wasps are known (and feared) for having an intensely painful sting. Now there’s a new reason for revulsion: They build nests with the corpses of dead ants. The newfound species of spider wasp has been given an appropriately hardcore name: Deuteragenia ossarium, or “bone-house wasps,” after graveyard bone houses and ossuaries.

Ecologist Michael Staab and colleagues based in China and Germany came across bone-house wasps in southeast China’s Gutianshan National Nature reserve when they were collecting nest samples for a different project, and they describe them in a PLOS ONE paper published last week. Wasps typically build nests at ground level and create chambers made of plant debris, resin, and soil, but they will also use abandoned cavities. Staab’s team capitalized on this by leaving out plastic tubes, called “trap nests,” in which wasps could build their nests.

After trap nests were colonized by wasps, Staab collected the traps and opened them with a knife to see what was inside. Mother wasps build nests to house their larvae, so as terrifying as larval wasps may be to a layperson, Staab was not surprised to find those. What was surprising was his discovery of a bunch of dead ants.

“The first time I saw it, I thought maybe I wasn’t seeing it clearly,” he said. “But then I found 10 to 15 more nests.” When the wasp larvae from the ant-filled nests hatched, Staab saw that they were all the same species. After analysis by taxonomic experts, the team discovered that they had stumbled upon a new species.

But why would wasps put ants in their nests? Staab and his colleagues think the bodies may help protect wasps’ nests through their scent. Ants communicate mostly by pheromones, and even after ants die, that scent lingers for days. Mother wasps abandon their larvae after nest-building, so the young are very vulnerable: Other animals co-opt wasps’ nests for their own eggs or break in to eat the larvae inside. Ants’ smell could deter animals from approaching the nest, especially if those animals have had bad experiences with ants in the past. They could also serve as an olfactory camouflage.

Staab and his colleagues are working with a chemist to figure out what compounds go into ant pheromones. “If we’re able to synthesize them, we want to do behavioural studies,” says Staab, such as testing whether ant pheromones really do repel parasites.

The researchers also want to determine how wasps get ants for their nests. Do they collect dead ants or hunt live ones? Staab thinks the good condition of the ants means they were freshly killed. “They were not decayed or molded,” he said, describing the ants he found. “That leads us to the assumption that they probably hunt live ants.”

Plus, like other spider wasps, the bone-house wasps hunt spiders. And the way a mother spider wasp does so is truly horrifying: She stings a spider, paralyzing it, then drags it back to her nest. There, she eats the non-essential parts of the spider, like its legs, leaving the body immobile but still alive. “That way, it is preserved for her larvae,” says Staab. Finally, she leaves it in the nest for her larvae to consume after she abandons them there.

So, while a spider wasp’s sting may be akin to “dropping a running hair dryer into your bubble bath,” as one entomologist describes it, you can be grateful that it can’t dismember you, let its young eat you alive, or use your corpse as a nest decoration.

A well-known French Riviera restaurant has lost its Michelin star because the famed food guide turned its nose up at the establishment’s “alternative” menu based on insects, its chef has claimed.

David Faure began serving crickets and mealworm in April last year at his Aphrodite restaurant in Nice, which in 2010 had been awarded a Michelin star.

But it appears the Michelin critics were less than impressed by dishes such as “small square of peas, carrot foam and mealworms” and “crickets in a whisky bubble with cubes of French toast and pears”.

They revoked his only star in the 2014 edition of the “little red guide”, released last month.
“I don’t want to hide only behind the pretext of insects,” he said, conceding that he had gone through “a few difficulties with service, as it’s very hard to find good staff in France”. But he added: “We also know that we were the first starred restaurant in France to dare to create a menu based around insects, and at no time did Michelin approach us to find out what exactly we were doing.”

Fellow chefs warned him he was mad to use insects

Faure created his insect menu after trips to Asia, where they are a common dish, to attract attention, but also to promote his belief in marrying nutrition and environmentalism.

But he said he knew it would ruffle traditionalists’ feathers. Fellow chefs warned him he was “mad” to use insects and would surely lose his accolade. However, he insisted that the loss of his star would not deter him.

“I will not change my way of doing things,” he said. “Europe is the only continent that doesn’t eat insects … We’re opening people’s eyes for the future.”

A well-known French Riviera restaurant has lost its Michelin star because the famed food guide turned its nose up at the establishment’s “alternative” menu based on insects, its chef has claimed.

David Faure began serving crickets and mealworm in April last year at his Aphrodite restaurant in Nice, which in 2010 had been awarded a Michelin star.

But it appears the Michelin critics were less than impressed by dishes such as “small square of peas, carrot foam and mealworms” and “crickets in a whisky bubble with cubes of French toast and pears”.

They revoked his only star in the 2014 edition of the “little red guide”, released last month.
“I don’t want to hide only behind the pretext of insects,” he said, conceding that he had gone through “a few difficulties with service, as it’s very hard to find good staff in France”. But he added: “We also know that we were the first starred restaurant in France to dare to create a menu based around insects, and at no time did Michelin approach us to find out what exactly we were doing.”

Fellow chefs warned him he was mad to use insects

Faure created his insect menu after trips to Asia, where they are a common dish, to attract attention, but also to promote his belief in marrying nutrition and environmentalism.

But he said he knew it would ruffle traditionalists’ feathers. Fellow chefs warned him he was “mad” to use insects and would surely lose his accolade. However, he insisted that the loss of his star would not deter him.

“I will not change my way of doing things,” he said. “Europe is the only continent that doesn’t eat insects … We’re opening people’s eyes for the future.”

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com//bug-serving-french-restaurant-lost-michelin-star-because-of-creepy-crawly-menu-chef-says/feed/0stdbugs06Jennifer Sygo: Are you ready to eat bugs? Get past the creep and crawl factor because insects are a great way to get protein and healthy fatshttp://news.nationalpost.com/health/jennifer-sygo-are-you-ready-to-eat-bugs-get-past-the-creep-and-crawl-factor-because-insects-are-a-great-way-to-get-protein-and-healthy-fats
http://news.nationalpost.com/health/jennifer-sygo-are-you-ready-to-eat-bugs-get-past-the-creep-and-crawl-factor-because-insects-are-a-great-way-to-get-protein-and-healthy-fats#commentsMon, 03 Mar 2014 21:13:13 +0000http://life.nationalpost.com/?p=133984

And now for something completely different. What if, instead of relying so much on traditional sources of animal protein, with their substantial impact on the environment, we switched our focus entirely and agreed to eat more bugs?

Yes, it’s true: There is a small, but growing movement to encourage Westerners to drop their fear of creepy-crawlies and embrace entomophagy — or eating of insects. And while cricket flour or locust meat aren’t necessarily high demand items (yet), that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t at least start to explore our relationship with bugs, which are commonly consumed as sources of energy and protein in many other parts of the world.

WHY BUGS?

Eating cockroaches might not be your cup of tea, so to speak, but there is a good case to be made for them: Insects are natural sources of protein, and in particular contain a full complement of essential amino acids, the building blocks of protein, in many of the same ways that animal products do. At the same time, their environmental impact is far less substantial.

Termites are particularly rich in oleic acid, the same type of fat found in olive oil

According to a study, published in 2010 in the journal PLOS One, for every kilogram of mass (basically, weight) gained, insects typically produced about half as much carbon dioxide as cattle (an average of 2,835 g of CO2 produced per kilo of mass gained for beef, vs. a range of 337-1539 g of CO2 produced per kilo of mass gained by insects), as well as significantly smaller amounts of harmful ammonia and methane gas. At the same time, insects gained weight at a faster rate than the larger animals, which means that they could be brought to market faster, and yet with less damage to the environment.

INSECT NUTRITION

While their nutritional value can vary widely from species to species, and across their lifespans, in general, insects offer protein and fat, as well as energy (calories), and some key micronutrients, such as iron, magnesium and zinc. So how many calories does the average grasshopper contain? Estimates range from 89 calories per 100 grams of raw grasshoppers native to Thailand, to 160 calories per 100 grams of home-grown Canadian red-legged grasshopper — values that are comparable to many cuts of chicken, fish, or beef. If mealworms are more your style, however, you’ll want to account for the extra calories: 100 g of mature mealworms offer up 138 calories, but their larvae are relatively rich at 206 calories per 100 g.

Franco expertly mimes along to Kanye's Yeezus track while Rogen pulls his best Kardashian, reclining suggestively on Franco's motorcycle in shots that are near- if not fully identical to the original clipYou'd be forgiven for raising an eyebrow when Kanye West released his latest music video, for <em>Bound 2</em>, last week. The clip — which the rapper, somewhat oddly, premiered on <em>Ellen</em> — featured West alternately performing in front of a scenic canyon vista and riding a motorcycle (backwards!) with a naked Kim Kardashian. It was received as everything from <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/music/kanye-west-naked-kim-kardashian-on-bound-2-clip-is-sickening-20131121-2xwny.html&quot; target="_blank">"sickening" for its objectification of women</a> (namely, West's fiancée Kardashian) to a <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/lostinshowbiz/2013/nov/21/bound-2-kanye-west-kim-kardashian-music-video-love&quot; target="_blank">strange and uncomfortable grab at publicity</a>.
Hollywood pals Seth Rogen and James Franco, meanwhile, found the odd video rife with parody potential, and thus have released a shot-for-shot remake of the clip, with the two of them filling its starring roles: Franco as Kanye and Rogen – back hair and all – playing Kim:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRckgn36lzY&w=620]
Franco expertly mimes along to Kanye's <em>Yeezus</em> track while Rogen pulls his best Kardashian, shooting smouldering gazes at the camera and reclining suggestively on Franco's motorcycle in shots that are near- if not fully identical to the original clip. Case in point:
[caption id="attachment_133990" align="alignright" width="620"]<img class="size-large wp-image-133990" alt="screenshot" src="http://nationalpostcom.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/bound2.jpg?w=620&quot; width="620" height="342" /> screenshot[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_133989" align="alignright" width="620"]<img class="size-large wp-image-133989" alt="screenshot" src="http://nationalpostcom.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/bound2-1.jpg?w=620&quot; width="620" height="346" /> screenshot[/caption]
The pair filmed the video while on the set of their latest movie together, <em>The Interview</em>, directed by fellow frequent collaborator Evan Goldberg, who also worked with Rogen and Franco on <em>This is the End</em>, <em>Pineapple Express</em>.
After the parody video's release, Kardashian sent a tweet to Rogen saying he "nailed" her sexy moves – and followed up with a second message letting the funnyman know her beau Kanye approved of the clip:
https://twitter.com/KimKardashian/status/405210092322037760
Rogen, ever the gentleman, thanked Kardashian for her support, pointing out that some of her "moves" were "really uncomfortable."
"That sh-t is harder than it looks," he added.
https://twitter.com/Sethrogen/status/405138577329512448
You can watch the original video for<em> Bound 2</em> below.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBAtAM7vtgc&w=620]
[related_links /]

Beyond calories, the protein content of insect is also on-par with meat: Yellow mealworms, for example, provide between 14 g and 25 g protein per 100 g fresh weight, while termites, locusts, and grasshoppers provide 13 to 28 g. By comparison, beef, chicken, and fish typically provide 15-26 g protein per 100 g raw weight. Insects are also typically a source of fats, and often provide essential linoleic (omega-6) and alpha-linolenic (omega-3) fatty acids. Termites are particularly rich in oleic acid, the same type of fat found in olive oil, and numerous insects, including weevils and grasshoppers, boast up to one-third of their fat content as palmitoleic acid, a type of fat known as an omega-7 that has recently been reported to improve insulin sensitivity and have anti-inflammatory effects.

BUGS FOR ALL?

While eating bugs could provide environmental benefits for the Western world, it could also be of vital importance to developing nations, where malnutrition and deficiencies in protein, iron, and zinc can be major concerns. In some cases, the essential amino acids (the building blocks of protein) in insects are used to complement other foods, such as grains, which lack some of the eight essential amino acids. In Papua New Guinea, for example, palm weevil larvae provide lysine and leucine to those who practice entomopagy — two essential amino acids that are absent in tuberous (starchy) vegetables. Termites have also been suggested as a means of obtaining key amino acids in parts of Africa where maize, which is naturally low in tryptophan and lysine, is a staple food. The movement to promote the use of insects in our diets is significant enough that in 2011, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (UNFAO) published a report, “Edible insects: Future prospects for food and feed security.”

Before we get too excited about having crickets for dinner, however, experts caution that we must be careful to develop sustainable cultivation and harvesting methods: there are examples of human overconsumption that has led to the collapse of some insect species. With careful cultivation and further research, however, there is good reason to believe that six-legged critters and their friends could have a valued place on our dinner plates at some point in the not-so-distant future — provided we can first overcome our fear of munching on food that creeps, crawls and flies.

Related

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/health/jennifer-sygo-are-you-ready-to-eat-bugs-get-past-the-creep-and-crawl-factor-because-insects-are-a-great-way-to-get-protein-and-healthy-fats/feed/0stdbugs1Arnold Van Huis/AP filesJennifer Sygo: Are you ready to eat bugs? Get past the creep and crawl factor because insects are a great way to get protein and healthy fatshttp://news.nationalpost.com/health/jennifer-sygo-are-you-ready-to-eat-bugs-get-past-the-creep-and-crawl-factor-because-insects-are-a-great-way-to-get-protein-and-healthy-fats
http://news.nationalpost.com/health/jennifer-sygo-are-you-ready-to-eat-bugs-get-past-the-creep-and-crawl-factor-because-insects-are-a-great-way-to-get-protein-and-healthy-fats#commentsMon, 03 Mar 2014 21:13:13 +0000http://life.nationalpost.com/?p=133984

And now for something completely different. What if, instead of relying so much on traditional sources of animal protein, with their substantial impact on the environment, we switched our focus entirely and agreed to eat more bugs?

Yes, it’s true: There is a small, but growing movement to encourage Westerners to drop their fear of creepy-crawlies and embrace entomophagy — or eating of insects. And while cricket flour or locust meat aren’t necessarily high demand items (yet), that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t at least start to explore our relationship with bugs, which are commonly consumed as sources of energy and protein in many other parts of the world.

WHY BUGS?

Eating cockroaches might not be your cup of tea, so to speak, but there is a good case to be made for them: Insects are natural sources of protein, and in particular contain a full complement of essential amino acids, the building blocks of protein, in many of the same ways that animal products do. At the same time, their environmental impact is far less substantial.

Termites are particularly rich in oleic acid, the same type of fat found in olive oil

According to a study, published in 2010 in the journal PLOS One, for every kilogram of mass (basically, weight) gained, insects typically produced about half as much carbon dioxide as cattle (an average of 2,835 g of CO2 produced per kilo of mass gained for beef, vs. a range of 337-1539 g of CO2 produced per kilo of mass gained by insects), as well as significantly smaller amounts of harmful ammonia and methane gas. At the same time, insects gained weight at a faster rate than the larger animals, which means that they could be brought to market faster, and yet with less damage to the environment.

INSECT NUTRITION

While their nutritional value can vary widely from species to species, and across their lifespans, in general, insects offer protein and fat, as well as energy (calories), and some key micronutrients, such as iron, magnesium and zinc. So how many calories does the average grasshopper contain? Estimates range from 89 calories per 100 grams of raw grasshoppers native to Thailand, to 160 calories per 100 grams of home-grown Canadian red-legged grasshopper — values that are comparable to many cuts of chicken, fish, or beef. If mealworms are more your style, however, you’ll want to account for the extra calories: 100 g of mature mealworms offer up 138 calories, but their larvae are relatively rich at 206 calories per 100 g.

Franco expertly mimes along to Kanye's Yeezus track while Rogen pulls his best Kardashian, reclining suggestively on Franco's motorcycle in shots that are near- if not fully identical to the original clipYou'd be forgiven for raising an eyebrow when Kanye West released his latest music video, for <em>Bound 2</em>, last week. The clip — which the rapper, somewhat oddly, premiered on <em>Ellen</em> — featured West alternately performing in front of a scenic canyon vista and riding a motorcycle (backwards!) with a naked Kim Kardashian. It was received as everything from <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/music/kanye-west-naked-kim-kardashian-on-bound-2-clip-is-sickening-20131121-2xwny.html&quot; target="_blank">"sickening" for its objectification of women</a> (namely, West's fiancée Kardashian) to a <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/lostinshowbiz/2013/nov/21/bound-2-kanye-west-kim-kardashian-music-video-love&quot; target="_blank">strange and uncomfortable grab at publicity</a>.
Hollywood pals Seth Rogen and James Franco, meanwhile, found the odd video rife with parody potential, and thus have released a shot-for-shot remake of the clip, with the two of them filling its starring roles: Franco as Kanye and Rogen – back hair and all – playing Kim:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRckgn36lzY&w=620]
Franco expertly mimes along to Kanye's <em>Yeezus</em> track while Rogen pulls his best Kardashian, shooting smouldering gazes at the camera and reclining suggestively on Franco's motorcycle in shots that are near- if not fully identical to the original clip. Case in point:
[caption id="attachment_133990" align="alignright" width="620"]<img class="size-large wp-image-133990" alt="screenshot" src="http://nationalpostcom.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/bound2.jpg?w=620&quot; width="620" height="342" /> screenshot[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_133989" align="alignright" width="620"]<img class="size-large wp-image-133989" alt="screenshot" src="http://nationalpostcom.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/bound2-1.jpg?w=620&quot; width="620" height="346" /> screenshot[/caption]
The pair filmed the video while on the set of their latest movie together, <em>The Interview</em>, directed by fellow frequent collaborator Evan Goldberg, who also worked with Rogen and Franco on <em>This is the End</em>, <em>Pineapple Express</em>.
After the parody video's release, Kardashian sent a tweet to Rogen saying he "nailed" her sexy moves – and followed up with a second message letting the funnyman know her beau Kanye approved of the clip:
https://twitter.com/KimKardashian/status/405210092322037760
Rogen, ever the gentleman, thanked Kardashian for her support, pointing out that some of her "moves" were "really uncomfortable."
"That sh-t is harder than it looks," he added.
https://twitter.com/Sethrogen/status/405138577329512448
You can watch the original video for<em> Bound 2</em> below.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBAtAM7vtgc&w=620]
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Beyond calories, the protein content of insect is also on-par with meat: Yellow mealworms, for example, provide between 14 g and 25 g protein per 100 g fresh weight, while termites, locusts, and grasshoppers provide 13 to 28 g. By comparison, beef, chicken, and fish typically provide 15-26 g protein per 100 g raw weight. Insects are also typically a source of fats, and often provide essential linoleic (omega-6) and alpha-linolenic (omega-3) fatty acids. Termites are particularly rich in oleic acid, the same type of fat found in olive oil, and numerous insects, including weevils and grasshoppers, boast up to one-third of their fat content as palmitoleic acid, a type of fat known as an omega-7 that has recently been reported to improve insulin sensitivity and have anti-inflammatory effects.

BUGS FOR ALL?

While eating bugs could provide environmental benefits for the Western world, it could also be of vital importance to developing nations, where malnutrition and deficiencies in protein, iron, and zinc can be major concerns. In some cases, the essential amino acids (the building blocks of protein) in insects are used to complement other foods, such as grains, which lack some of the eight essential amino acids. In Papua New Guinea, for example, palm weevil larvae provide lysine and leucine to those who practice entomopagy — two essential amino acids that are absent in tuberous (starchy) vegetables. Termites have also been suggested as a means of obtaining key amino acids in parts of Africa where maize, which is naturally low in tryptophan and lysine, is a staple food. The movement to promote the use of insects in our diets is significant enough that in 2011, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (UNFAO) published a report, “Edible insects: Future prospects for food and feed security.”

Before we get too excited about having crickets for dinner, however, experts caution that we must be careful to develop sustainable cultivation and harvesting methods: there are examples of human overconsumption that has led to the collapse of some insect species. With careful cultivation and further research, however, there is good reason to believe that six-legged critters and their friends could have a valued place on our dinner plates at some point in the not-so-distant future — provided we can first overcome our fear of munching on food that creeps, crawls and flies.

Five McGill business students have won a $1-million prize to launch a very unusual startup: fighting hunger with grasshoppers. The team will teach farmers on the outskirts of Mexico City to harvest “chapulines,” or edible grasshoppers, to be sold to the nearly four million people living in the in the world’s largest slum, Neza-Chalco-Itza. This year’s winners of the Hult Prize, which awards funds to students to fight world hunger, were Mohammed Ashour, Gabriel Mott, Shobhita Soor, Jesse Pearlstein and Zev Thompson. Mr. Ashour, 26 spoke to National Post’s Maria Assaf on Tuesday:

Q: Why did you choose selling insects?

A: 2.1 to 2.5 billion people in the world eat insects on a regular basis. There have been a lot of medical studies outlining that insects have a lot of proteins and iron, which are good for health. In slums around the world many women, especially pregnant women, suffer from iron deficiency. With chapulines and with most insects, they get a massive dose of iron. Also, the Mexican government loved our project because we are trying to preserve a rich tradition which is the consumption of chapulines.

Q: How do you make insects edible?

A: We first boil the chapulines and then we dehydrate them and our distributor puts them in flavours such as lime, garlic and chili, which are very popular in Mexico. This is very important, because people there prepare them in pots that are laced with lead, and there’s a lot of research about people getting led poison and metal toxicity. We mitigate these problems by processing the insects in a safe environment.

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A: Chapulines are are only available for three months every year. The hand work is very expensive. Because they are scarce and there is a lot of demand, they become costly, some people actually eat them in expensive restaurants. Chapulines are really an aspirational food, which is really why we chose the name Aspire [for our group], because interestingly enough, a lot of the people in the slums aspire to eat these insects on a more regular basis, but they are unable to because they are expensive. Right now one kilo of chapulines costs approximately US$16. That’s more than the price of one kilo of beef. We are still working out the prices, but we are planning to sell them for two thirds of the actual price.

John Minchillo/AP Images for Hult PrizeOver the last six months, a McGill quintet has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, journeyed across three continents and significantly altered its business model in a quest to win the prize.

Q: Can grasshoppers serve as a meal?

A: No. Some people eat them as a snack like chips, or put them on tortillas. They are there to supplement a meal. You can’t just eat it alone, you obviously need a balanced diet. But by making protein more accessible, people in the slum will be able to have more balance in their nutrition. You can’t substitute your chicken for these, it’s a matter of addition. In a slum you can’t change people’s behaviour. But we are trying to introduce insect fortified products. Things like cornflower that is fortified with grasshopper powder.

Q: How much money do you expect to make, and what do you plan to do next?

A: We will be producing at a loss until 2016, but we expect that by 2018 we will have a US$18 million cash flow. Were hoping to enter East and West Africa over the next five years using the same business model.

A wetter-than-normal spring and a hotter-than-average summer ahead have provided the perfect conditions for a national mosquito massacre — if you haven’t noticed the nipping just yet, it’s about to get bad.

Alberta’s floods have left a lot of standing water. Across the rest of the Prairies, the spring thaw after a heavy winter snow has done the same. Parts of the Maritimes have seen double the average levels of rain in the past few months. Ontario has had consistent rainfall.

Couple that with the onset of the “dog days of summer” in the next few weeks — that period toward the end of July and early August — and you’ve got prime conditions for blood-sucking bugs, the scourge of the Canadian summer.

“You could imagine out there there’s a lot of mosquito sex waiting to happen,” said Environment Canada senior climatologist David Phillips. “The breeding grounds are there in abundance.”

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Mosquitoes thrive in tropical conditions and breed near water, whether it’s a pond or a reservoir of rain water trapped in a backyard wheelbarrow. While temperatures in some parts of the country, such as the stretch from Windsor to Peterborough in Ontario, are expected to remain around normal, everywhere from “Vancouver to Bonavista” is slated to be warmer than average, Mr. Phillips said. “My sense is we haven’t seen anything yet, that it’s about to break out.”

Of course, municipalities and provinces have been working hard to control the mosquito population. In Ottawa, mosquito trap counts have risen more than 50%.

The City of Winnipeg’s entomologist, Taz Stuart, brought in in 2004 with the superhero-style mandate of taming a population of famously massive mosquitoes, says the city’s notorious bloodsuckers are fairly under control this year.

Several weeks ago, a big storm dropping approximately five inches of rain an hour created many “larval habitats” in the city’s south end, Mr. Stuart said in email to the Post Thursday.

A mosquito trap in Assiniboine Park caught a “blood-chilling” 560 bugs on Monday, spiking the average for the entire city.

The Insect Control Branch has been “aggressively larviciding” that southwest part of the city but hasn’t needed to use the even more aggressive measure of “fogging” — emitting a large cloud of insecticide — just yet.

Data from the City of Edmonton show the mosquito population is slightly down from last year, but the numbers don’t tick upward until at least early July, city officials said. “Nuisance mosquitoes” were particularly bad in the city in mid-July 2010.

Entomologists in Nova Scotia are linking their increased mosquito population this year with the near extinction of their brown bats to white nose syndrome, a mysterious fungal disease believed to have killed upward of 5.5 million bats in North America.

“It’s caused a loss of 90, 95% of our little brown bats, a dominant species here,” said Andrew Hebda, the curator of zoology at the Nova Scotia Museum in Halifax. The increased population of mosquitoes is one of the “costs” of the bat’s decline, because it has cut out one of their predators.

“Mosquitoes are cold blooded, so the warmer it is, the faster their generation time,” he said. “That combination of lots of moisture and heat right now means we’re probably going to have more generations of mosquitoes this year than we have had in other years.” Mosquitoes typically breed six to seven generations in the spring and summer months, he said.

“It seems to be one of the better years for insects, so worse for us,” he said.

For the estimated 80 different species of mosquito in Canada, a wet spring transitioning to a hot and dry summer is completely ideal, said Bob Anderson, a research scientist at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa.

Mosquitoes are cold blooded, so the warmer it is, the faster their generation time

“If it stays wet, people stay indoors and you probably don’t hear about it as much simply because people aren’t exposed to it and carrying out outdoor activities,” he said. “But if you get a situation where you get rain and then really nice weather and everybody goes flying out for barbecues and picnics, the mosquitoes just inhale them from there. It’s dinner on a plate.”

To truly understand the effect mosquitoes are expected to have on Canadians this summer, Mr. Hebda points us no further than the golf green.

“This is the kind of a season where you want to be a good golfer because if you’re a bad golfer, you’ll end up … knocking your ball into the woods, that’s woods where there’s no wind so lots of mosquitoes,” he said. “In other words, play good golf, otherwise you’d probably be better off to just stay home.”

It doesn’t ward off the annoying, blood-thirsty critters with a wave of a smartphone, but it does allow users to warn others and provide information to figure out which infested neighbourhoods to avoid.

The app developed by a team at the University of Manitoba lets users rate mosquito activity in an area — information that is then uploaded to a map which all users can see.

Engineering student Rory Jacob says he and his colleagues came up with the idea after using similar technology to track traffic congestion and the spread of influenza. Being from Manitoba where mosquitoes are considered the province’s “unofficial bird,” Jacob says it didn’t take long for them to figure out how to apply the technology to the blood-suckers.
People can check the app — called the M Tracker — before they leave the house so they know whether to douse themselves in bug spray, he says.

“If you’re going to an area of the city, to a park or something with your family, and you don’t know if you’re going to bring mosquito spray, you can take a look at the app,” says Jacob, who worked on the app with engineering professor Bob McLeod and fellow student Chen Liu.

The City of Winnipeg diligently tracks mosquito numbers using scientific traps, but the app could give officials another — more personal — perspective, Jacob suggests.

And while mosquitoes are plentiful in Western Canada, the app can be used anywhere in the world.

“It’s been downloaded in Russia, in the United States, in the U.K. It uses the map built-in to essentially tell you how the mosquitoes are in your area.”

The app has been downloaded about 200 times. Jacob hopes it will take off as more people hear about it.

“Realistically, the more people you get, the better the data is going to be. You’ll be able to get more consistent results out of it.”

LONDON — For decades, health officials have battled malaria with insecticides, bed nets and drugs. Now, scientists say there might be a potent new tool to fight the deadly mosquito-borne disease: the stench of human feet.

In a laboratory study, researchers found that mosquitoes infected with the tropical disease were more attracted to human odours from a dirty sock than those that didn’t carry malaria. Insects carrying malaria parasites were three times more likely to be drawn to the stinky stockings.

The new finding may help create traps that target only malaria-carrying mosquitoes, researchers say.

“Smelly feet have a use after all,” said Dr. James Logan, who headed the research at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. “Every time we identify a new part of how the malaria mosquito interacts with us, we’re one step closer to controlling it better.”

Malaria is estimated to kill more than 600,000 people every year, mostly children in Africa.

Experts have long known that mosquitoes are drawn to human odours, but it was unclear if being infected with malaria made them even more attracted to us. Infected mosquitoes are believed to make up about 1% of the mosquito population.

Using traps that only target malaria mosquitoes could result in fewer mosquitoes becoming resistant to the insecticides used to kill them. And it would likely be difficult for the insects to evade traps based on their sense of smell, scientists say.

“The only way mosquitoes could [develop resistance] is if they were less attracted to human odours,” said Andrew Read, a professor of biology and entomology at the University of Pennsylvania, who was not part of Logan’s research. “And if they did that and started feeding on something else — like cows — that would be fine.”

Researchers sealed human volunteers into a foil bag to collect their body odour

Read said the same strategy might also work to target insects that carry other diseases such as dengue and Japanese encephalitis.

In a related study, Logan and colleagues also sealed human volunteers into a foil bag to collect their body odour as they grew hot and sweaty. The odours were then piped into a tube next door, alongside another tube untainted by human odour. Afterwards, mosquitoes were released and had the option of flying into either tube. The insects buzzed in droves into the smelly tube.

Logan said the next step is to identify the chemicals in human foot odour so that it can be made synthetically for mosquito traps. But given mosquitoes’ highly developed sense of smell, getting that formula right will be challenging.

Some smelly cheeses have the same odour as feet, Logan noted.

“But mosquitoes aren’t attracted to cheese because they’ve evolved to know the difference,” he said. “You have to get the mixture, ratios and concentrations of those chemicals exactly right otherwise the mosquito won’t think it’s a human.”

Other studies have shown mosquitoes don’t become attracted to humans for about two weeks — the time it takes for the malaria parasites to become infectious for humans

Scientists said it’s crucial to understand the subtleties of mosquito behaviour. Other studies have shown mosquitoes don’t become attracted to humans for about two weeks — the time it takes for the malaria parasites to become infectious for humans.

“At the moment, we only have these glimpses of how parasites are manipulating the mosquitoes,” said George Christophides, chair of infectious disease and immunity at Imperial College London. “We need to exploit that information to help us control malaria.”

JERUSALEM — Israel is on a locust alert as upwards of 30 million of the destructive bugs descend on neighbouring Egypt ahead of the Passover holiday.

Israel’s Agriculture Ministry set up an emergency hotline Monday and is asking Israelis to be vigilant in reporting locust sightings to prevent an outbreak.

Locusts have a devastating effect on agriculture by quickly stripping crops.

Swarms of locusts have descended on Egypt, raising fears they could spread to Israel.

The locust alert comes ahead of the Passover festival, which recounts the biblical story of the Jewish exodus from Egypt. According to the Bible, a plague of locusts was one of 10 plagues God imposed on Egyptians for enslaving and abusing ancient Hebrews.

LONDON — Parasitic mites have turbo-charged the spread of a virus responsible for a rise in honey bee deaths around the world, scientists said on Thursday.

Bee populations have been falling rapidly in many countries, fuelled by a phenomenon known as colony collapse disorder. Its cause is unclear but the Varroa mite is a prime suspect, since it spreads viruses while feeding on hemolymph, or bee’s “blood.”

To clarify the link between mites and viruses, a team led by Stephen Martin of Britain’s University of Sheffield studied the impact of Varroa in Hawaii, which the mites have only recently invaded.

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They found the arrival of Varroa increased the prevalence of a single type of virus, deformed wing virus (DWV), in honey bees from around 10 percent to 100 percent.

At the same time the amount of DWV virus in the bees’ bodies rocketed by a millionfold and there was a huge reduction in virus diversity, with a single strain of DWV crowding out others.

“It is that strain that is now dominant around the world and seems to be killing bees,” Martin said in a telephone interview. “My money would be on this virus as being key.”

handoutVarroa mite

Other factors — including fungi, pesticides and decreased plant diversity — are thought to play a role in colony collapse, but Ian Jones of the University of Reading said the latest findings pointed to the virus and mite combination as being the main culprit.

“This data provides clear evidence that, of all the suggested mechanisms of honey bee loss, virus infection brought in by mite infestation is a major player in the decline,” he said.

Jones, who was not involved the research, said the findings published in the journal Science reinforced the need for beekeepers to control Varroa infestation in colonies.

The threat to bee populations extends across much of Europe and the United States to Asia, South America and the Middle East, experts say.

Bees are important pollinators of flowering plants, including many fruit and vegetable crops. A 2011 United Nations report estimated that bees and other pollinators such as butterflies, beetles or birds do work worth €153-billion ($191-billion) a year for the human economy.

Scientists at the University of California, San Francisco discovered that rejected male flies have a tiny neuropeptide F molecule in their brain that pushes them to drink far more than their sexually satisfied counterparts.

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The levels of the molecule were higher in sexually satisfied males than in those who got no sex, leading scientists to speculate that their work could shed light on brain mechanisms behind human addiction.

A similar human molecule — neuropeptide Y — may also link social triggers to behaviors such as heavy drinking and drug abuse, according to the study published in Science journal.

“If neuropeptide Y turns out to be the transducer between the state of the psyche and the drive to abuse alcohol and drugs, one could develop therapies to inhibit neuropeptide Y receptors,” said lead researcher Ulrike Heberlein, a professor of anatomy and neurology at UCSF.

She said clinical trials were underway to determine whether neuropeptide Y can alleviate anxiety and other mood disorders as well as obesity.

For the experiment, male fruit flies were placed in a container with females flies, including both virgins and some that had already mated.

Virgin females were receptive to courting males and readily mated, but females flies who had mated lost interest in sex for a time because of sex peptide, a substance that males inject with sperm during the encounter.

Rejected males then stopped trying to mate, even when placed in the same cage as virgin flies.

But when they were placed by themselves in another container that had two straws — one containing plain food and the other containing food with 15% alcohol — the rejected males binged on the alcohol.

The scientists said the behaviour was predicted by the levels of neuropeptide F in their brains.

“It’s a switch that represents the level of reward in the brain and translates it into reward-seeking behavior,” said lead author Galit Shohat-Ophir of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Janelia Farm Research Center in Virginia.

Rejected flies had lower levels of neuropeptide F and sought an alternative reward through intoxication.

The scientists found that they could induce the same behaviors in the flies by genetically manipulating the levels of neuropeptide F in their brains.

Activating neuropeptide F production in the brains of virgin male flies caused them to behave as though they were sexually satisfied, and thus they were less keen to drink.

And lowering the levels of the molecule in sexually satisfied flies made them behave as though they were rejected, inciting them to drink more.

MONTREAL — Researchers led by a McGill University biology professor have managed to create new types of “super soldier” ants and, in the process, may have solved an important evolutionary puzzle.

The scientists applied juvenile hormone to various ant larvae at crucial stages in their development, resulting in the emergence of the super soldiers, whose bodies react to stress by expanding in size. The ants also have huge oblong heads and giant, vicious mandibles, which the insects use to defend their colonies.

Super soldiers occur naturally in some ant species – notably in the southwestern United States – but according to McGill’s Ehab Abouheif, his team did not expect to be able to create them in colonies where they had never been seen before.

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The findings are groundbreaking for evolutionary theory, Abouheif said, because they show dormant genetic potential can be locked in place for millions of years, only to re-emerge as a result of environmental conditions.

“Birds with teeth, snakes with fingers, and humans with apelike hair – these are ancestral traits that pop up regularly in nature,” Abouheif explained.

“But for the longest time in evolutionary theory, these ancestral traits were thought to go nowhere – slips in the developmental system that reveal things from the past.”

Dario Ayala / Postmedia NewsDr. Ehab Abouheif, right, Canada Research Chair in evolutionary developmental biology at McGill University and PhD student and lead researcher Rajee Rajakumar look at some of the ant colonies used for research at their laboratory at the McGill University biology department in Montreal on Friday

Now, the scientists believe these “slips” are actually dormant traits that are common to every member of a given species.

“What we’re showing is that environmental stress is important for evolution,” Abouheif said. “Anytime you have a mismatch between the normal environment of the organism and its genetic potential, you can release (new characteristics) – and these things can be locked in place for 30 million to 65 million years.”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJff-LIJO1M&w=640&h=390]

The team’s findings were published in the most recent edition of the journal Science.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/super-solider-ants-created-at-mcgill/feed/6stdSuper AntsDr. Ehab Abouheif, right, Canada Research Chair in evolutionary developmental biology at McGill University and PhD student and lead researcher Rajee Rajakumar look at some of the ant colonies used for research at their laboratory at the McGill University biology department in Montreal on FridayBeetles get busy with stubby beer bottles, study findshttp://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/beetles-get-busy-with-stubby-beer-bottles-study-finds
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/beetles-get-busy-with-stubby-beer-bottles-study-finds#commentsFri, 30 Sep 2011 14:46:50 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=97273

By Amy Chung

It was a case of beer, sex and mistaken identity.

A University of Toronto professor’s research about the copulation patterns of male Australian jewel beetles with “stubby” beer bottles won him an Ig Nobel Prize, a parody of the prestigious award given to researchers whose findings will first make people laugh and then think.

The 2011 winners were presented the award at Harvard University on Thursday by actual Nobel Prize winners.

Darryl Gwynne of the U of T’s Mississauga campus’ ecology and evolutionary biology department was heralded for his 1983 paper “Beetles on the Bottle: Male Buprestids Mistake Stubbies for Females.”

“I’m honoured, I think,” Gwynne said in a statement.

“The awards make people think, and they’re a bit of a laugh. Really, we’ve been sitting here by the phone for the past 20-plus years waiting for the call. Why did it take them so long?” he asks.

Gwynne and Australian colleague David Rentz were conducting field work in Western Australia 23 years ago when they noticed something unusual along the side of the road.

“We were walking along a dirt road with the usual scattering of beer cans and bottles when we saw about six bottles with beetles on top or crawling up the side. It was clear the beetles were trying to mate with the bottles,” he said.

The bottles — known as “stubbies” in Australia — resembled a “super female” jewel beetle that are big and orangey brown in colour, with a slightly dimpled surface near the bottom that reflects light in much the same way as female wings do.

Ignoring the actual female beetles, the males began mounting the beer bottles and attempted to mate with them to a perilous death — they fried under the hot sun and some were eaten by hungry ants.

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Despite the humorous circumstances, Gwynne said the research had a serious message.

In this case, female beetles were ignored by the males which could impact the natural world.

“Improperly disposed of beer bottles not only present a physical and ‘visual’ hazard in the environment, but also could potentially cause great interference with the mating system of a beetle species,” the paper said.

Gwynne also points out that the research supports the theory of sexual selection: that males, in their eagerness to mate, are the ones that make mating mistakes.

Gwynne conducted his research as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Western Australia in Nedlands. He joined U of T Mississauga in 1987.

The research was published in the journal of the Entomological Society of Australia and the U.K.-based journal, Antenna.

MOSCOW —An airport official smuggled a hive of bees on to a plane, panicking passengers when they escaped mid-flight in one of a series of lapses at the provincial Blagoveshchensk facility, reports said Thursday.

The bees made a break for freedom during a flight to Moscow from the far eastern city after they were illegally stashed in a box in a coat locker in business class, a spokesman for the Yakutia airline told AFP.

“It was frightening. The passengers were in shock,” Andrei Savostin said.

“The crew showed heroism. The (stewardesses) managed to tape up the cloakroom doors to stop the bees flying out.”

The incident on May 28 was exposed on Thursday in a front-page story in state newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta which alleged systematic failures at Blagoveshchensk airport.

Carrying insects aboard a plane is banned under Russian aviation rules, but the bees were carried on by the airport’s deputy director, Anatoly Smirnov, who skipped security checks, Rossiiskaya Gazeta alleged.

The passengers included officials from Moscow, who were seen off by the deputy governor and seated in business class, it reported.

Blagoveshchensk’s transport prosecutor told Rossiiskaya Gazeta that the incident had been investigated and the airport management had been sent a letter of warning.

The prosecutor, Denis Mazein, declined to answer questions by telephone.

At the same airport earlier this month, an airliner overshot the runway on landing, seriously damaging the plane and prompting the regional governor to reprimand the management for decrepit equipment and security lapses.

Lax security at Russian airports was exposed in 2004 when two suicide bombers bribed their way on to flights at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport, despite lacking valid tickets.

In June a woman was caught at the same airport, Russia’s busiest, after managing to board a plane without a ticket, documents or any luggage.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/escaped-bees-menace-passengers-on-russian-flight/feed/0stdBees on a plane! (Well, these actual bees weren't, but you get the picture)Edmontonians do not welcome their new insect overlordshttp://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/edmontons-summer-of-bugs
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/edmontons-summer-of-bugs#commentsFri, 12 Aug 2011 00:00:31 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=87112

Choking hordes of mosquitoes. Torrents of excrement-spewing aphids. After enduring an early summer plagued with downpours, Edmontonians are grappling with a 20-year storm of flying insects.

The insect clouds were so thick at Commonwealth Stadium that the Edmonton Eskimos were forced to move their practice indoors. “I thought I was down in the swamps of Louisiana,” said backup quarterback Kerry Joseph, a native of the Bayou State. “It’s the worst I’ve ever dealt with in Canada.”

Aphids, meanwhile, are raining down from the city’s trees. Another beneficiary of the moist spring, the tiny, soft-bodied green insects have been tearing up residential shrubs and gardens – and falling into Edmonton lunches and hairdos. Worse, the aphids constantly excrete a sweet, sticky syrup that can strip paint from cars, finish from porches and turn entire trees black with mold.

Traditional bugkillers are near-useless against the insects. They reproduce so quickly that even the most pesticide-decimated population can bounce back in a manner of days. “It’s like trying to scoop out the ocean with a little bucket or something,” says Mike Jenkins, the city’s biological sciences technician. Edmonton-area garden centres have reported quintupling sales of ladybugs, a prime aphid predator.

Usually, it would be Winnipeggers reporting these kinds of insectoid onslaughts. Gift shops in the Manitoba capital are filled with mosquito-themed kitsch and the nearby village of Komarno even features a prominent metal sculpture of one of the infamous insects. This year, however, Winnipeg is experiencing its most bite-free summer since the early 1980s.

Getty Images/FilesA mosquito, likely in Edmonton

As late as April, Edmonton was issuing optimistic forecasts that 2011 would be a light year for mosquitoes. After several years of drought, city biologists figured that the earth would simply soak water up like a sponge – denying mosquitoes open water in which to lay their eggs. The soil ultimately could not keep pace with a slew of rainstorms, however, and the terrain quickly became pockmarked with potential mosquito nurseries. “We were seeing water in places we hadn’t seen water in decades,” says Mr. Jenkins. City crews tried as best they could to seed the region’s lakes and ponds with anti-mosquito chemicals, but extreme weather kept their helicopters grounded.

Organizers at outdoor Edmonton events such as the Indy have outfitted their setup crews with meshed beekeeper’s hoods just to allow them to breathe without swallowing any mosquitoes. “Just talking on the phone, I actually ate a bunch,” said Don Snider, production manager for the Edmonton Folk Festival, during an interview with the Edmonton Journal.

Spurred in part by the torrent of anti-mosquito calls and letters and flooding into city hall, Edmonton city crews have spent the summer employing a rare — and somewhat risky — weapon against the insects: Adulticide.

Most mosquitoes are eradicated in the cradle. Crews spray bodies of water with a mild hormone that either kills mosquito hatchlings or prevents them from growing wings. With adulticide, respirator-clad crews are being sent to parks and festival venues to literally poison adult mosquitoes out of the air. Since adulticide also has the potential to kill beneficial insects such as ladybugs and dragonflies, the city is using it sparingly.

Meanwhile, three city-owned helicopters continue to roam the countryside wiping out mosquito larvae. So far this summer, the fleet has hit an area one and a half times the size of Manhattan.

The city’s bitten masses have focused much of their mosquito rage on Edmonton city council. On the eve of the outbreak, the city voted to cut the mosquito control budget by $200,000. “The program doesn’t have enough helicopters, staff or equipment to do the job properly,” wrote Glyn Williams, a former supervisor with the City of Edmonton, in a letter to Postmedia. “They didn’t stand a chance under the circumstances.”

Given the prairie plagues that Edmonton has faced in previous summers — a 1982 mosquito outbreak was 10 times worse than this summer’s — 2011 has actually been quite lucky for the Alberta capital.

The same rainfall that brought billions of mosquitoes and aphids to life has also done wonders for the city’s urban forest. In previous years, drought has killed off hundreds of downtown trees and shrubs. “This summer, most of those problems have pretty much gone away,” says Mr. Jenkins.